Fractured
by Alli Snow
Summary: John lives most of his life now in stages, changing centuries as casually as some people change their clothes.


**Fractured**

John lives most of his life now in stages, changing centuries as casually as some people change their clothes, moving through the fabric of time and through walls and through lives. The skips never last long – a couple of hours at most – but they come in sequences, fast and furious, one after another until he can hardly remember the taste of beer, or the cold bite of Antarctic winds through his Gore-Tex jacket, or the low, steady hum of a jet engine, or any of the other insignificant things that have suddenly become so meaningful to his life.

It's always somewhere on the city. Past, present and future, Atlantis has claimed him, or maybe she's saving him, keeping him chained to this place by a thin thread of sanity, fighting the Wraith influence that's run rampant through his body and his mind and the very molecules that make up both.

Somewhere on the city. Control room, med labs, far piers, areas that haven't been built yet, areas that were built and then destroyed and rebuilt in a completely different way.

John has seen Atlantis' birth, and its death.

He has seen the faces of the first Ancients, and the faces of the expedition members, and then their descendants, and ultimately the faces of the Wraith. He's not sure exactly when the invasion happens – he just knows that at some point in the future the humans lose, and the Wraith win, except they weren't expecting the last-ditch self-destruct to be tied into the star drive. John figures eventually he will skip into that penultimate moment, when the smug superiority on the bastards' faces fades into stunned horror, and then vanishes in an all-consuming fire.

He wonders if it'll actually kill him.

When he skips, he's not really there. He's a ghost, a specter, walking through the familiar halls with no one any the wiser. He sees the Atlantean craftsmen installing the fine colored glass, laughing and talking in their pride and enthusiasm, and then he skips ahead and sees a Wraith feeding on someone, he doesn't know who, a woman with dark skin and startlingly blue eyes, and then he skips and the city is bright and clean again and there's a bronze-skinned young man standing on the balcony with a sheaf of papers in his hands, and then he skips again and it's only silent still darkness and he knows the only living soul in the whole city is the other Elizabeth Weir, sealed up in the stasis pod where she'll spend the next several thousand years.

He's out of phase, out of sync. Isolated, detached from all the horrors and beauties of the world, the past and future of Atlantis spread out before him, and though the city herself has nothing to do with this torture he can almost hear her silvery voice in his head. _See this. See me. See all that I was, all that I am, all that I will be_.

And sometimes he thinks he hears her asking him for help.

He's in no position to help anybody. The only reason he's alive is because sometimes he skips back to his own time, his own universe, the existence that he originally came from. He knows that he's home because the dissonance that rings through his body during all the other shifts is absent, and because everything around him suddenly seems a little bit clearer and brighter, and also because he usually shifts back into existence near Teyla.

More often than not, when he comes back he comes back within a few yards of her. Beckett and Rodney think it might have something to do with her Wraith gene. John doesn't know, and most of the time he doesn't care, because any constant in his life – no matter how small – is welcome and blessed and when he opens his eyes and sees her and realizes that she sees him it is probably the only real happiness he ever feels anymore. It's the knowledge that, for at least a few hours, he isn't alone anymore, he isn't a shadow walking across the graves of his friends, he's home, he's home, until the next time.

These brief return trips are the only times he has to eat and drink, as the food and water in the other places are all as insubstantial as everything else. So the first thing he does is eat, and eat and eat, and drink and then eat some more. Sometimes he's lucky enough to come back into the mess hall, which scares the hell out of everyone else there, but before he can even wipe away a stray tear of profound relief she's there, with a sandwich or an apple or once even Jello, because it was the closest thing, saying "here, eat this". And of course he's starved, and feeling helpless and scared and sorry for himself, so he sits and eats and drinks his fill while somebody commandeers a backpack and fills it with water bottles and nonperishable items – MREs mostly, another facet of the punishment – in case his next series of skips takes longer than a couple of real time days. Then Elizabeth and Rodney and Beckett and Ronon and the rest of the base seem to descend on him en masse, and he's dragged to the infirmary or the lab or some other bolt hole so someone can run more tests, use this brief time to try and figure out what's happening, how it happened, how to stop it, what it's doing to him.

Kate Heightmeyer attended the first dozen or so of these impromptu meetings, trying to gauge his state of mind; now she doesn't even bother.

Eventually he feels it, the tightening sensation of a rubber band being pulled to its zenith, and then the world snaps back together and he shifts again.

This is his life.

There is a council of Atlanteans sitting around the conference table, talking in serious tones, pointing to maps and diagrams, all intelligent and thoughtful, all completely oblivious to John's presence. He passes the time by looking over shoulders, and eavesdropping on conversations, trying to learn something that could be of use back in what he's come to think of as the Real World. And sometimes he tries to catch some of the cuter women while they're in the shower, at least until his better angels get a hold of him.

There is only the sound of the city waiting in the darkness, settling around itself, sighing at the lightless rooms and empty halls. Atlantis has spent much of its time in solitude, and so John does as well. He always stays well away from the room where the stasis chamber is, and away from the ZPMs that Weir will periodically cycle. He may be a ghost, he may be unable to affect anything while he's skipping, but there's no point in risking it and screwing up the past.

Or would that be the future?

He's on the outskirts of the city. The central spire is still being built. John looks around, wondering at the impossible view. Everyone is smiling and intense and dressed in neutrals, and John is almost positive that none of them have ever heard of the Wraith, or even imagined such a horror.

He's in the jumper bay. It's dark and dismal, and most of the jumpers are gone, and inside one is a Wraith. He's trying to figure out how to fly it, John expects, and he amuses himself by taunting the son of a bitch for his ineptitude. But it hurts more than he wants to admit to see them here, knowing they won, enjoying the spoils of their long-sought victory.

He hasn't told anyone back in the real world about this part. He should, but he can't. How could he? How could he tell them that everything they've been struggling towards will eventually all be for nothing, because the Wraith will come and they will win? He can't expect them to accept that. He can barely accept it himself, and he's seen it over and over and over again.

A little human girl trails after the Wraith in the jumper, carrying his equipment, staring after the monster with loathing and fear in her wide, dark eyes. John knows that she's a slave. He also knows that she's the Wraith equivalent of an MRE. He leaves the bay and winds up alone in what had once been a science lab, shuddering, hugging his knees to his chest, waiting out the rest of the skip in painful solitude.

He's exhausted, he should sleep, since sleeping is one of the few things he _can_ do in these out of phase stages, but he can never sleep during the Wraith skips. It's stupid, but he keeps thinking that if he's asleep, blissfully unawares, they might be able to find him, and take him, and that would be the end of it.

Sometimes he wants it to end, but not at the hands of a Wraith.

John keeps seeing the little girl: not much older than ten or eleven, painfully thin, her young body not much more than a collection of points and angles, her dark hair cropped short, her dark eyes watchful and weary. He knows – he's sure; instinct still speaks to him – that the Wraith have been on Atlantis for at least ten years, maybe even more than, hungry for the promised banquet on Earth but willing to take the dissection of the city slowly. Wraith don't know time as humans do. So where did the girl come from? Who is she, how did this happen to her, and why?

It's the first time he's really let himself wonder about the people in the other times, as though they're real, as though there's something he can do to help them. And of course there isn't. He can't even help himself. And if Rodney's right about the physics – and that seems a given – even if he brought a nuke back from the real world and put it under the Wraith's bed and set it off, nothing would happen. The explosion would be as out of phase as John himself, and the only person incinerated would be him.

Sometimes he wants it to end, but not in incineration.

He skips on.

Silence and darkness, as the city waits on the bottom of the ocean for the expedition to revive it. He tries to sleep, but he can't.

He skips.

Atlanteans crowd the control room, their normally-placid voices raised in alarm. The shield is failing, we need backup power, if even one dart gets through… This, then, is the first siege. John knows how it ends.

He skips.

The mess is almost empty; there are just a few people sitting at tables, eating quietly as they read reports or essays or novels with questionable covers. One is the bronze-skinned young man that John has seen on several occasions. As John watches, the man looks up from his meal, staring into space with an annoyed, almost challenging expression.

He skips.

Wraith again. They've turned one of the larger conference rooms into their own mess. Guards hold back a group of frightened humans, mostly young people, and in fact as John looks closer he sees that none of them seem older than their early twenties. A silver-haired Wraith has one of them by the neck, a skinny young woman with thin dark hair who struggles vainly in his grip, and John knows that it is the little girl from the jumper.

The Wraith drags the girl away.

John runs after them.

He doesn't know what he intends to do. He can't do anything. He's a ghost, a shadow, a specter, and every blow aimed at the Wraith's head passes through as though he were made of so much smoke, and when he stands in front of the Wraith and its captive they pass through him as though he isn't there. Which of course he isn't. Not as far as they're concerned.

The Wraith takes the young woman to a smaller room and throws her to the floor. He's angry. She hasn't been breeding like she's supposed to, and John realizes that with a small select group of humans in the city of course the Wraith would want them to make more humans, and maybe that's the only way to stay alive. But the girl stares back defiantly and she climbs to her feet, and even though she's shaking she tells the Wraith in colorful language where he can go, and what he can do with various parts of his anatomy, and then she spits in his face. John can't help but feel pride.

A clawed, hungry hand thrusts out, catching the young woman in the chest, driving her backwards into the wall where she's pinned. She screams once as he begins to feed, and then falls silent.

John wants to throw up, but there's nothing in his stomach. He vomits anyway. When he's done, the girl is a lifeless husk on the intricately patterned floor, and the Wraith is gone.

He skips.

He shifts into darkness, not the darkness of the abandoned city he's come to recognize so well but the darkness of a simple room dimmed for sleeping. This happens sometimes; he skips into someone's private quarters, during a private moment, and in certain circumstances it can be pretty embarrassing and he's almost happy to be invisible. But this is the first time it's happened back in the real world, back in his own time, and he catches his breath and freezes.

It doesn't matter. She always seems to have a preternatural sense for when he's shifted back, or maybe it's just well-honed instinct letting her know that she's no longer alone in this room. Teyla stirs and pushes herself up in bed, and by the starlight filtering in through the window their eyes meet.

"Colonel," she whispers, throwing aside the blankets and swinging her legs to the floor. John automatically averts his eyes, more out of common decency than a lack of curiosity. But this is Teyla, practical Teyla, and she's dressed in a lavender nightgown that falls almost to her knees, although her shoulders are left bare. Her quick mind moves at once to the necessities. "I do not have anything to eat here, but-"

"I'm not hungry," he interrupts, his voice sounding dull and strange in his own ears. He's not hungry. He's not even nauseous anymore, or sleepy. He just feels tired, which is completely different than wanting to sleep; he's threadbare, fractured. It's the stress, of course, and the trauma of what he's been forced to see, forced to endure, but he's also starting to suspect that these shifts are taking a more physical toll. The human body was never meant to move like this – erratic, unstoppable – not even a body with the Ancient gene. And when Teyla walks up and puts her hand against his roughened jaw, the better to lift his head and look into his eyes, he struggles against the temptation to lean into her touch, bury his face in her hair and feel the warmth and resiliency of her body against his.

It seems like a thousand years has passed since he's felt anything.

Her expression is solemn as she drops her hand to his shoulder, her dark eyes liquid in the starlight. She seems to know that something isn't right – or more accurately that it's even more wrong than normal – and that he hasn't been taking care of himself like he did at the beginning. John hasn't looked in a mirror for weeks, it seems, and he already can tell that he's lost weight. Like he's leaving little bits of himself behind every time he skips.

"I should call Dr. Weir and Rodney," says Teyla at last, glancing over her shoulder at the headset resting on her bedside table, but she doesn't turn away from him. She just looks up into his face with that quiet, growing concern. "John?"

"How long has this been happening?" he asks her.

Her expression is guarded, and she hesitates for a moment as though contemplating a lie. "Almost four months," she says at last, and she's probably not counting the two weeks he spent as a captive of the Wraith. "This is the twenty-first time you have come back."

"And is Rodney or anyone else even close to an explanation?"

She swallows, drops her gaze. "He is working. They all are. If they can piece together some of the equipment that was damaged, perhaps-"

"It's been four months," he says, more to himself than to her. "Rodney's the best there is. If he can't even figure out what happened to me, then there's no way to find a solution. A cure, whatever. And I can't do anything. I can't help. This is just how it's going to be."

"You should not speak this way…"

But his little speech was more exhausting than he would have thought possible and he has no energy left to argue with her. He stumbles a little as he walks to the bed and she's there next to him, helping him sit, one warm hand against his back, her face tight and drawn. Suddenly he feels guilty, incredibly guilty that when he comes back it's usually to her, that he's become such a burden in her life, and again he thinks about ending it.

Yet it seems like a shame after hanging on this long.

"If you will not eat," says Teyla softly, "and if you will not let me call the others, then you must let me take care of you."

He looks up, curious despite himself. "Meaning?"

"A hot shower," she says decidedly, and she stands, taking his hand and pulling him up.

He feels like an invalid, a child, as she leads him into the water room and passes her palm over the sensor, activating a fall of steaming water. He undresses slowly, pulling the shirt over his head, unbuckling his belt, stepping out of his pants and then under the spray with no great enthusiasm. She closes the stall door and leaves with the promise of a brief, discreet absence and a prompt return. Like he might try to drown himself in the standing water if she's gone for long.

There is soap, and shampoo, and even a razor that she probably wouldn't kill him for using just this once, but he finds that he can't reach for any of them. He simply stands there, letting the water fall down his body, down his nose and lips and chin, down his chest, his abdomen, his back and groin, streaming down his legs, swirling away down the drain, and when he closes his eyes he can see the dead girl, the man in the mess hall, the Wraith in the jumper, the vacant, lonely city that calls out to him to bear witness.

Not all of the water in that city – which is a considerable amount, considering its environment – can wash away all of it, wash away the helplessness that gnaws on his bones.

The shower stall door opens a crack; with a start John realizes that Teyla has returned, that she's been calling his name and he hasn't answered. "I'm fine," he says halfheartedly as she peeks in, her eyes focused firmly on his face.

"I brought you fresh clothing," she says, and then her gaze dips a little, not down his body but at the untouched soaps and towels. She frowns, purses her lips, and then she steps into the shower, lavender nightgown and all, and closes the door behind her.

The hot water falls directly from above, like rainfall, and she is almost instantly drenched, her long hair dripping, the nightgown plastered to her body as she pours soap onto a washcloth and confidently begins to scrub it across his chest, his shoulders, his back and stomach. A strong, clean smell wafts on the air, like herbs and sunlight, a scent he only now realizes that he's always associated with Teyla.

Her touch is professional, her hands do not linger, and yet there is caring in the way she caresses him and the simple human contact is so strange and wonderful that he wants to sink to his knees with the pleasure of it. When she lathers his hair with shampoo he bows his head to allow an easier reach, and when she draws the razor along his jawline he stands very still, his eyes closed, concentrating on the sensation of her fingers light on his skin, and the rasp of the blade, and the nearness of his naked body to her own.

When she is done she does not loiter but passes her hand over the sensor again, stopping the water. In a few seconds there is a towel wrapped around his waist, and she leads him back out of the stall, still dripping. "Your hair is getting long," she observes, as though she's thinking of taking this to the next level and giving him a haircut, and the notion is so logical and so absurd that he actually smiles, and then the smile fades as she reaches up and brushes a strand from his forehead. He reaches out to touch the ends of her own hair, to make a comment of a similar nature, but somehow his head instead falls to rest on her hip. The smell of the herbal soap still swirls around them, warm and intoxicating.

In the bedroom he loses the towel, she peels off the sodden nightgown and he covers her cool body with his own. His kisses are hard and demanding as he presses her down and he wonders if this is just a pity screw, but in the end it doesn't matter because he wants her, needs her, needs the hands that clutch at his shoulders and the legs that hook over his hips and the back that arches her body so perfectly against him. He needs the soft voice that gasps into his ear when he takes her, and the way she moves, and the way she holds him when he can't move anymore, when every muscle tenses, tenses, and then his body falls into that boneless stupor, and into trembling sleep.

They wake together in the dawn and move again in that same harmony, more gently this time but also with a new awareness of parting, and loss, and this time he makes sure that she cries out before he does, he kisses her neck and her shoulder and cradles her body against his as they ride to the top.

Afterwards he dresses, and slips on the pack she filled with food and water the night before. Teyla pulls on a robe and sits next to him, her head resting lightly on his shoulder. They do not talk. There's not really anything to say. When the stretched feeling comes over him again he makes sure he moves away, because his clothing and his back always travel with him, so there's so reason to assume that by touching someone he would condemn them to this same hell. Instead of holding her hand he holds her eyes, until they disappear in a flash of invisible light and are replaced by something else.

He skips.

Early Atlantis. Maybe still on Earth. Hard to tell. Ancients move around him, beautiful and serene and unaware of his plight, and even if they did knew he can't imagine that they'd care much.

Wraith-occupied Atlantis. He stays away from any inhabited areas this time, but he can still feel their presence, a violation of the city.

Somewhere in the middle. There is a man sitting in what was once Elizabeth's office, dressed in the civilian uniform of the expedition, typing on a computer. This man is middle aged, of medium build, blonde and blue-eyed and in general unremarkable except for a funny little cowlick on the back of his head. He sighs and shakes his head and rubs one hand against his mouth, and it's strangely comforting for John to know that the job hasn't gotten much easier over time.

Empty Atlantis. He is deposited in the darkened Gate room, and after a moment of looking warily around he sits and pulls out some of the protein bars that Teyla packed for him so many eons ago. As he eats he looks up into the still and silent recesses of the city that in actuality aren't so still and silent. He can hear Atlantis whispering to him.

_See this. See me. See all that I was, all that I am, all that I will be_.

"Go to hell," he says aloud, surprised by the hurt in his voice. "You guys were so great, you think I'm so special, why don't you do something to help me?"

_But we have._

Startled, John drops his power bar. This is not the voice of the city, and at the same time it is. "How?" he demands, wondering if he's finally, completely lost it.

_You were held in captivity for two weeks. The Wraith scientist put a great deal of effort into manipulating your DNA. Did you not think it strange that you were able to escape so easily?_

"It wasn't easy," he snaps, but now that he's thinking about it he realizes that of course it was. The ground had trembled, as though with an earthquake, and with a very small amount of finagling the doors had opened. He'd made it out of the facility and to the surface, and then to the Stargate, and even though he hadn't had an IDC something had told him to go through anyway, and something had possessed Elizabeth not to activate the shield, and he'd made it back alive.

_Did you not wonder what prevented the damage in your genes from manifesting until you were safe back in Atlantis?_

"But what's the point?" he asks angrily, trying not to imagine the horror of skipping, randomly, around some Wraith-infested planet, or around the galaxy at large. "Even if you put it off, it still happened. Why? Just so I could get an in-depth history lesson?"

_We want you to stop it._

"Stop what?" he asks, but he knows. The invasion of the Wraith. The despoiling of the Ancient's prize jewel. "I can't stop anything. I'm not really here. The only time I can even interact with people is when I'm back home. Are you saying I can stop it from there?"

_No. By the time of their coming, our children will not have fought the Wraith in many decades. They will grow complacent. They will believe the threat defeated. They will not be prepared for what comes. They will not heed the warnings of their ancestors._

He thinks about this. If they'd had more time to explore Atlantis before venturing offworld – and they had had more time, they just hadn't known that the city would rise to the surface of its own accord – they might have learned more details about the Wraith early on. He might have realized that killing the Keeper would be a bad idea. They might have stopped the whole awakening before it ever happened. "You mean I'm supposed to warn the people in Atlantis about the invasion before it happens, but soon before it happens so they take me seriously?" he asks scornfully. He's pretty much figured out who he's talking to now, and he's a little annoyed that the ascended Ancients will break their own non-interference rules whenever it's convenient for them.

_You must pass on the information._

John scrambles to his feet, almost falls as the room spins dizzily around him, but stays upright. "Listen, geniuses, I can't pass on anything. No one can see me when I move. Nobody knows I'm there!"

The voices are silent for a moment, for several moments, for so many moments that he starts to worry that he's scared them away, and then he worries again that he's simply gone barking mad. But he can still sense their presence with him, up there in the darkness, and at length there is a reply.

_Ask him who his parents are_.

He scowls. "Ask who?"

_He cannot see you. But because of his lineage he is a strong carrier, harboring both lines of genes, and he senses your presence. Even better than the girl._

"What girl?"

But the voices withdraw, leaving on the silent, plaintive cries of the city herself, and he has nobody and nothing to rage against except for the darkness.

He is standing in one of Atlantis' hallways. The sun streams in through the colored glass and he can hear faint voices in the distance; he can almost convince himself that he is back in his own time, but there is a wrongness about everything which dispels that hope. He looks around, wondering if the voices of the ascended will speak to him here as well, and that is when he sees the girl.

She's ten, maybe eleven, dressed in the simple-yet-eclectic garb John has come to identify with the Athosians. Her long dark hair is pulled back in a ponytail, her dark eyes lively with intelligence. It is not the girl he has seen enslaved and later fed upon in the Wraith-infested future of the city, but the resemblance is striking enough that he's intrigued, and follows her down the hall, through a door and out onto one of the western-facing balconies.

He finds himself staring at Teyla.

It's her, but it's not. The hair is still long and glossy, but there's a certain weariness that's set in around her eyes. She's older, although not by very much. Ten years, perhaps.

"Liaden," she says, turning away from the view and sounding surprised. "I thought you were going to the mainland with Patrick?"

"I am," says the girl, Liaden, and she grins. "Andy said that if we're good he'll let the two of us take turns flying a little once we're out over the water."

Teyla raises her eyebrows. "And does Elizabeth know about this?"

"She won't if nobody tells her," the child responds, the smile turning decidedly mischievous. "I thought maybe you would want to come."

"No thank you," Teyla responds promptly, although her smile is indulgent. "I plan on staying here where it's safe."

Liaden makes a little show of her mock outrage. "I won't lose control! Patrick might, but Andy will be there and he's such a natural he'll probably be able to rescue us at the very last second before we plunge into the water," she says, with obvious relish.

"Just what every mother wants to hear," says Teyla, shaking her head. "Be careful, Liaden."

"I will," says the girl breezily, and she spins on her heel and turns to go.

"Be careful," echoes John, feeling a strange sort of warmth spreading through his body as he looks at the girl. _Liaden_.

The child stops short. She turns back, looking puzzled. Teyla doesn't seem to notice.

John catches his breath. "Can you hear me?" he asks the girl.

Frowning, the girl looks around the balcony, and she bites her lip. Then she shrugs and continues on her way.

John follows her to the jumper bay. Andy proves to be a rugged, competent-looking Air Force captain that John has never seen before, but he reasons that anyone Teyla would trust with her daughter must be, well, exceedingly trustworthy.

Patrick, a blonde boy about Liaden's age, with clear blue eyes and a conspicuous cowlick, arrives shortly thereafter with a ten-years-later version of Laura Cadman. The captain is taking the children with him on a trip to the mainland, John learns, to visit some friends and also take some soil samples, and Cadman tells Patrick not to crash into the ocean, and in his barely-accented voice the boy replies that he'd never do something so completely lame as _that_ which reminds John of Rodney's near-miss and makes it all but certain that this child is Cadman's son.

They climb in, and Laura waves a cheery goodbye, and John resists the urge to jump in after the children because he doesn't know what might happen if he shifts away while not within the city.

And then, as though thinking about it could make it happen, he skips.

The young man with the bronze skin is sitting alone in one of the city's many labs, reading a thick novel with a red dust jacket. He looks up and frowns, almost exactly the same frown as the girl Liaden, and John asks nervously, "Can you hear me?"

The man slowly closes the novel, marking his place with his finger. John doesn't have to glance at the cover to recognize Tolstoy. "Not… exactly," he says, his voice deeper and rougher than expected. "But I know when you're there. And I can… I don't know what you would call it. I guess maybe it's hearing."

John's mouth is suddenly dry, and he berates himself for never trying this before, even though there was no reason to expect that it would work. His hands are clenched tightly at his side. "You don't seem… you know, worried."

"I've felt this a couple of times now," says the man, glancing idly around as though not sure exactly what part of the room to address. "Nothing bad ever happened. And you're not a Wraith. If anything I'd suspect you were one of the Ancestors."

John steps closer, very close, finding familiarity in the strong lines of the other man's face, in the hazel eyes and tousled brown hair. "What's your name?"

"Johnny Beckett," is the calm reply.

John forces himself to breathe slowly. "Who are your parents?"

"Why do you want to know?" asks Johnny – no… easier to think of him as Beckett, especially since he doesn't have the accent – his lips twitching in a wry smile. "Gonna go back in time and kill them so I'm never born?"

"You've seen Terminator?" asks John, surprised.

The other man looks startled for the first time. "_You_ have?"

They lapse briefly into silence.

"Patrick and Liaden Beckett," says Beckett at last. "They're my parents. Still here on Atlantis, both of them."

_He cannot see you. But because of his lineage he is a strong carrier, harboring both lines of genes, and he senses your presence. Even better than the girl._

John nods to himself, understanding part of the riddle at last. Both of this man's grandfathers were natural carriers of the ATA gene, although the case could certainly made that one had more of a natural flair with it than the other. And his maternal grandmother had a small amount of Wraith DNA as well. His lineage does in fact make him special.

"Have you ever seen a Wraith?"

Beckett frowns. "Not face to face, no. I saw one from far away, before another member of my team killed him. There aren't many left."

"That's not true," says John quickly. "They're hiding out somewhere, waiting for you guys to become complacent and stop worrying, but they're not gone. I don't know what you think happened," he hurries on when it looks like the other man is about to interrupt, "and I'm not even sure I want to know, but they're not that easy to get rid of. They're out there, just biding their time, and… and… _they come through the Stargate, one time when you're not being careful enough, you think it's somebody else but it's them, a lot of them, and they take the whole city_."

That part, he knows didn't come from him. Or not directly from him. It came through him, like he's a conduit, a radio, from the voices that whisper behind the city's darkness.

"They feed on most of the people but they keep the ones alive who have the ATA gene because they need someone to work certain parts of the city's technology, and they breed humans for the gene so they can figure out things like the star drives and get to Earth. It doesn't work, because of measures that were put in place, but a lot of people die and the city is destroyed."

Beckett gets to his feet; he looks startled, and for good reason. "How do you know this?" he demands, for the first time appearing uncomfortable. "Are you… from the future?"

"In a manner of speaking," says John wryly. "I've been a lot of places. I haven't actually seen it, but…"

_Take his hand_, say the voices.

John frowns. "I can't."

"Can't what?"

_Do it, John_.

The stretched rubber band feeling begins to come over him – so soon, so quickly, he's about to shift again. He's out of phase, a ghost, a shadow, and he can't believe that Beckett will be any more insubstantial than anything else he's tried to touch, even if they are related. Besides, if it is true, what right does he have to trap this man in the nightmare with him?

"Can't what?" asks Beckett again, sounding anxious. He sets the book down on the counter. "Listen, do you need help? Can I do something?"

"You can come with me," says John, fighting at the pull of another time. "See it for yourself."

The other man hesitates. "Will I be able to come back?"

_Do it now._

"Yes," says John, hoping he won't be made a liar, and as he skips away he grabs at Beckett's hand, which is real and warm and solid.

They're in the central tower, on the walkway which crosses from Elizabeth's office to the control room. Beckett immediately pulls away, gasping and rubbing his eyes, blinking in the sudden brightness, and he turns and actually _looks_ at John, stunned. "What just happened?"

John ignores the question. "You can see me?"

Beckett stares, which answers that question easily enough. "Yeah, I can… you… You're John Sheppard."

It's not a question, but before John can reply there is the sound of a wormhole engaging in the room beneath them, and voices from the control room.

There was someone in the glass-walled office, not Elizabeth but a tall, slender woman about her age with shoulder-length brown hair and hazel eyes. She comes striding out of the office – Beckett and John both hurry unnecessarily out of her way – and calls out, "Raise the shield. Who is it?"

Beckett's silence has taken on a new level of profundity. Curious, John prods him. "What is it?"

The other man swallows hard. "I think… I think that's Kyla."

"Who?"

"My daughter."

The family tree is starting to become a little much for John's overtaxed brain to handle; it's enough for right now to realize that the hazel-eyed woman is one of his descendants.

"Radio contact coming in from the Calbach," says the man seated at the controls.

"The Calbach? We haven't heard from them in a while," says the woman lightly. "Maybe they're ready to trade after all."

The technician listens closely to something only he can hear, then nods. "Just got a transmission from their Prime Minister's office, Dr. Channing. They say they want to come through and discuss terms."

Channing smiles. "I thought they might come around," she says. "Let them through."

This, of course, is the beginning of the end. It is not a trade delegation from some world called Calbach that comes through, it is the Wraith. The same Wraith that have been hiding somewhere since before Johnny Beckett's day, perhaps biding their time, perhaps not, waiting until a day when such simple tactics would succeed. Perhaps they had spent all that time working on the technology that, as soon as the bearer passes through the event horizon, temporarily paralyzes all the Ancient machinery in the tower, including the shield controls, the manual-off for the Stargate, and the programmable self-destruct.

Communications are left unimpeded, but it is obvious after only the first fifteen minutes that the city will not be able to withstand this assault. Most of the tower staff are shot and rendered unconscious, and some are simply fed upon where they lay. Kyla Channing is captured and held unharmed, for the time being, and after the central area of the city is secure she is trundled off somewhere to be held with the other expedition members who have the ATA gene.

Johnny Beckett is pale and sweating. For someone who has never seen a Wraith up close before, not to mention their savagery and the destruction they leave behind, this is indeed a potent warning.

"Calbach," he murmurs when the carnage pauses and they have a moment to think. He's leaning down with his head between his knees. "I've never… never even heard of them… obviously someone they meet later on... and they betray us…"

"Maybe not betray," says John gently, trying to be comforting through his own pain and disgust. "Maybe they were tortured for the information. It doesn't matter. Forget Calbach. They have to know to be more careful, have more safeguards in place. Maybe just the knowledge that the Wraith are still out there will help. Assuming," he adds as an afterthought, "that they believe you."

"They'll believe me," says Beckett faintly. "Stranger things than this have happened in the Pegasus Galaxy. But I guess you know that, don't you John?"

John doesn't answer. The shift feeling is beginning to come over him again, and he takes his grandson's hand, and prays.

Together, they skip.

And at the last minute, as though a giant hand has reached down and batted them to the side, they change course, jerking somewhere else, back to the dark lab, and _War and Peace_, and an Asian woman who was just crossing the threshold sees their reappearance – or maybe just Beckett's – and shrieks and jumps back out the door.

Beckett laughs hollowly. "Now they'll have to believe me," he mutters, and looks around the room. "Are you still here?"

"I'm here," says John. "Can't see me anymore?"

"No." Beckett crosses his arms, brow furrowed. "I don't… I don't really know what to say. It feels like I'm going crazy."

"Join the club."

"But you're really John Sheppard, aren't you?" He laughs a little. "My, well, namesake. Hard to believe. Hard to believe any of this, that I was just… that I saw… what I saw. And now it's all on me to stop this from happening, isn't it?"

"As far as the Ancients are concerned," says John bitterly, "we're just tools. Me, you… maybe even Teyla."

_Teyla_.

He catches himself.

Teyla. She'd been a part of it too. The Ancients had needed John's lineage, his genes, to continue into the future so there'd be someone he could communicate with, someone he could warn. They'd knowingly thrust him into her path every time he'd skipped back into his own time, probably figuring that eventually he'd turn to her like he had, that he would get her pregnant with Liaden, that Liaden would conceive a child with Carson Beckett's son, and that _that_ child would have the just the right genetic mix.

It seems like it would be a hell of a lot easier to just go back in time and prevent the Wraith from ever being created. But then again, that's not how the ascended Ancients seem to work.

"Is Teyla still alive?" he asks, not sure if he wants to know.

Beckett's expression is hesitant. He glances towards the open doorway, no doubt wondering about the frightened scientist, before he answers. "I… I never met her."

John's gut tightens. "She's dead?" he asks, feeling cold.

"Until today, I would have said yes. But until today, everyone supposed that you were dead too." He pauses thoughtfully. "When my mother was about my age, the expedition found a man… an Ancestor. He was old, and sick; they put him in quarantine. But from what I understand Teyla spent a great deal of time with him. Brought his meals, kept him company. And they talked, although nobody ever knew just what they discussed. It's a strange story. When Teyla wasn't with him she was alone in her room. Then one day somebody turned off the cameras in the infirmary. When Grandfather Carson came into the room, the Ancestor was gone. So was Teyla. No one ever saw either of them again."

John's mouth is dry, his head spinning. "She just… just left her daughter?" Of course, he had left his daughter too, before she'd even been born, but it hadn't been his choice.

"They discussed it beforehand, my mom's always told me. She just says that they both knew 'it was the only way'. That's all she'll say about it. I know it's painful for her, since she never knew her fa—you," he says awkwardly. "But there were many people here who loved her and looked after her, even after she was married, and I know my mom believes that Teyla made the right decision. Whatever it was."

Without warning, with absolutely the worst timing ever, John feels the world begin to stretch away around him. He's filled with panic, the cold knowledge that this may be the closest thing to home he ever sees again; why should the ascended take pains to redirect him back to reality, now that the correct events have been set in motion?

They must have been set in motion.

"I have to go," he tells Johnny Beckett. "Tell your mom—"

For a long time it seems as though nothing has changed. His random stops are clustered together in the heyday of Atlantis, when Ancients drifted through the halls confident in their superiority over all other life, then scurried from building to building with their eyes trained on the pristine skies, then prepared themselves for evacuation back to Earth through the Stargate. Once he even drops in on the expedition during their first arrival, which is as novel as it is heart-wrenching: to see Sumner, and Ford, and Rodney, and Elizabeth, and himself, all eager and excited and not knowing what the coming days and weeks and years would bring. Only the city remains the same through all of this, beautiful Atlantis.

Finally his damaged, displaced DNA takes him somewhere he's never been before: a little house far away from the city center, near a manmade beach on the water's edge, where Kyla Channing plays with her children: a hazel eyed boy barely out of his toddler years, and a dark-haired girl with piercing eyes who in another life was enslaved and killed by the Wraith.

There are no Wraith here. There is no threat. They are happy.

They are John's descendants, and the descendants of the Ancients, the Ancestors, and they are home.

The ascended work within their own rules, for they know that to break them outright would open the doors to complete anarchy. And when it comes to these beings, with the power to not only move mountains, but also make it so they never existed in the first place, anarchy could be synonymous with the end of life in the universe.

Teyla was but a cog in the machine they devised, the same as he was, but the ascended are not completely without compassion. They sent something of an emissary to help her on the path to enlightenment, which was also the path to John.

If time is different to the Wraith, it is a known quantity to the Ancients who still watch over their city, and they manipulate it like running water. When he sees her standing there, a bright shape in the darkness, he knows that it is her hand who has been guiding him even as he has danced to someone else's tune.

Confronted with the scope of such immense power he feels a flush of panic, of the helplessness that was ground into his bones, and he shies away. This cannot possibly still be the woman he cared so much for, who taught him to fight with sticks and cared for him during the bleakest of times and raised their daughter into a fine and beautiful woman.

His body is ailing, and if he remains he will die. And yet ascension is not the answer either, not for him, because the greatness of the power would be outweighed by the inability to do anything worthwhile with him, and it would drive him crazy anyway.

_Quickly, then_, she says, smiling, _while the others are pretending not to look._

This seems to be a joke amongst the ascended, one he tries not to think too hard about.

"Okay," he says, ignoring the fear in his heart, closing his eyes.

There is a great warm rush, like being submerged in bathwater, a rising up, a great peace, a sense of rightness in his body that has not been there in a very long time, a profound understanding, riding the winds, a welcoming.

_Are you sure you do not wish to stay?_

It's not Teyla asking; she already knows. It's the others, and he has the sense that they see this has a homecoming, the return of a great hero. But there is no place for heroes here, for those who would ignore the way things have always been done, who would invite anarchy and unrest. The others may not understand this, but she does.

And so they fall back home, back to the city, back to Atlantis.


End file.
